


and your life is just a storm you're braving

by r1ker



Category: Insidious (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 21:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8912143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker





	

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, no, no, no."

 

Specs has his back to the door's frame, hearing his partner mutter nearly incoherently, but definitely teary. He waits a beat before rounding the corner, weighty flashlight clutched in one hand to fend off anything that comes swinging at them in response. Over Tucker's knees a limp body is positioned in an awkward splinter. Specs can't see any blood and he sure as hell doesn't want to come any closer to find out for sure what killed their beloved Elise. It's apparent soon enough by the red and angry indentations on the base of her neck, striated in some place by a man's powerful grip, that no spirit had a hand in her early demise.

 

Tears fall from Tucker's face onto the collar of Elise's tattered blouse, and they show no sign of stopping as Specs puts his hand on Tucker's shoulder. Under the palm of his hand, and soon the tight grip of his fingers as he tries using him to solidify them both, Specs can feel him shaking. "Oh, Tucker." Tucker answers him without saying a word, falling forward so that he may cover Elise's dead body with his own.

 

Specs eases down onto his knees, mindful of the way Elise's body splays lifeless in front of him. He gently moves her legs to the side so that he can get closer to Tucker, to urge him to let her go, at least until they can figure out just what the hell to do next. "Let her go, it's okay." Specs whispers the last part once again, just to let Tucker know that while it might not seem anywhere fucking near okay right now, it's going to be, just like she always made it to be.

 

Her shoulders slip from his grip and knock against the hardwood flooring with a soft, dull sound. Once she is free Tucker lets out a sob that sounds like he'd been holding it for ages, a noise unlike anything Specs has ever heard from him before in all the years they've known, lived, slept, breathed in the same space.

 

Tucker's face falls into his shoulder and the unspoken positional brevity stuns Specs, along with the physical and emotional weight he is suddenly burdened with. For a moment he hesitates and lets his arms lie stiff against his body before gathering Tucker in close. Strong arms loop around his torso and hold on for dear life. Specs does his very best not to cry and for a moment thinks he'll be getting away from this tear-free, with the kind of stoicism she'd want from him even in light of her death. But he fails the second he hears Tucker say, low and hoarse into the wet sleeve of his dress shirt, "She didn't deserve this." And Specs couldn't agree more.

 

Later, when they've made it out of the house with her body shrewdly wrapped in a tarp from the back of the van, Specs stands in the master bedroom to her home, watching the rain begin and spatter gently against the windowpanes. Tucker sits catatonic on the trunk at the end of what was once her bed, looking at nothing in particular, eyes still red and color splotched high on his cheeks. "I'll call that friend of mine at the county coroner's office tomorrow morning and see about getting him to take her in, hush-hush. No sense in dragging cops into it when we both know Josh didn't mean to."

 

"He meant it," Tucker croaks, "you can't tell me he didn't know exactly what he was doing because he doubted her, us, from the start." Specs looks over his shoulders and sees the sad anger in Tucker's face glaze over into something swirling beneath his skin, unrepentant fury that Specs hasn't seen in him in a long time. His hands rub at his face furiously and try to get rid of any tear tracks. "We don't go back there, we don't help. Ever again." The tone implies that Specs should leave it at that, so he does. He does so for now, at least.

 

The funeral is a sordid affair, with five attendees, counting Specs and Tucker. Carl manages to make himself known, gathering with them around her casket (the cheapest they could afford, even with her naming them as her sole beneficiaries on her life insurance policy, ghost hunting didn't pay the bills sometimes).

 

Next to him in the funeral home Tucker is dressed in the nicest clothes an afternoon trip to a consignment store could spring for. Specs looks at him and each and every part of the outfit, the carefully knotted tie, the scuffed shoes that couldn't have been shined even if they had tried their very hardest. Hell, his beard's even trimmed, cut close to his full cheeks in a way Specs hasn't seen in the last twenty years. Over the course of their partnership Specs has seen him clean-shaven twice. Both times he's wished he'd gone blind temporarily.

 

Two words – baby face.

 

When the brief words are read before Elise's body at the wake, their arms press together in search for solidarity. Not a beat is lost when Tucker's hand seeks out Specs', wrapping around it strong and sure, warm in the sweltering heat of the funeral parlor meant to counteract the bitter chill and wispy rain outside. The priest gives a curt nod to them both when he's done droning from the prepared spiel read at every ceremony, and faceless pallbearers with slick raincoats ease the casket from the podium, intern it outside, leave them behind at the foot of the gravestone to mourn.

 

"Before I met you, she was all I had," Tucker says to him beneath the umbrella. Specs knows it, knows Tucker's melancholic existence before Spectral Sightings was ever a thing.

 

Middle child, close to his father but not really once he'd gotten wind of Tucker's desire to stray from the forged path – one of four miserable years as an undergraduate, slaving towards a degree in civil engineering – and chase the unseen.

 

"She had hosted a symposium on ESP, astral projecting, all that shit, at the community college one day. After that I was hooked. I stopped thinking about roads, rivers, dams, canals. She took me in and showed me things I had only been told were foolish. Where my own mom had died I'd seen her as the second one I wish to God I had been given instead." They look down, up at each other from where they're standing. Specs makes sure the hand holding the umbrella is safely in place before he reaches up on his tiptoes, throws both arms around Tucker's neck.

Tucker's a multitasker for sure, free hand warm on the small of Specs' back. "If it makes you feel any better, she'd have loved the little ensemble you have on today. She told me one time she'd give anything for you to not wear cargo shorts anymore." Tucker laughs, a little strained on account of the tears tightening his throat, but squeezes Specs a little tighter.


End file.
